Hello, I’m here to talk about “Catlateral Damage,” a game in which you take the role of a cat and knock stuff off the table. I want to use this game to open up the discussion about why we seemingly refuse to think out of the box with games. You must be a fantasy hero who is the hero of everyone, slender, muscular, Humanoid. You must fit some archetype. It must conform to this way.

Pshaw I say. Why not an MMO where you’re a cat? You gain XP knocking things in the floor. The entire world is filled with Humans and your goal is to just knock things in the floor. You upgrade your ability to jump and paw at things. You could make it expansive with cat PvP, fighting to obtain the most Human attention or doing the most damage or eating the most food.

Think of other great examples. What if an MMO had you drive a car? Oops, that was done and it failed, because the development of it was too difficult. That’s not the only problem, but to some extent it’s one of the big reasons we don’t see cool hip games where you’re a cat or a car or a spaceship and the objectives are something different beyond kill 10 Porings.

Maybe I’m alone in the world. Maybe the market just dictates that all games must have you play some hunky or lanky dude (one of the extremes) that goes around killing with extreme prejudice in a fantasy or mildly sci-fi environment. We’re right now barely getting out of our comfort zone with voxels, but only because procedurally generated content is a set it and forget it kind of development process. Once you build the framework, you just load in the structures and the game generates the worlds.

I think Eve Online does a good job of being different. You get to play as a space ship and it’s successful, but it’s like taking Civilization or Alpha Centauri and turning them into an MMO. Meh! That’s not too different, IMO, nowhere near being a cat and knocking things in the floor.

All I’m saying is come onnnn, give us an MMO that is different. That is unique. That just makes me go WTF and scratch my head. Give me QWOP like controls while I’m a Rhino trying to fly through space and to level up you must discover M&Ms on random planets. Give me something different.

Sure, it’s outside of everyone’s comfort zones but who cares? Let’s see some imagination and innovation.

While we’re on that subject, I’d like to say innovation in gaming peripherals would be awesome, in a lot of ways. The Wii and Kinect were both cool, but I’d like to see a big collaboration where all the gaming companies come together and say THIS right here is the thing we need. This new idea is something we could all use. That or the Occulus Rift should get the entire world behind it. That would be cool.

See you guys Friday, maybe we’ll rant more about Landmark.

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About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.